Good points... didn't really think of my work space.... I actually live 2 hours from my Office... so I work from Home 2-3 days a week...so I will be doing it in my home office. I don't do large runs of stickers and will be doing just some banners, occasional shirts. Promotional signs for our tradeshows larger stickers like 12" x 8" for vehicles we sponsor... maybe some lettering for our trucks.
I saw you said buy a 54 inch printer.... that is taking on a bit more than I would like...at least I think that now. This is actually wanted for not such large format stuff. 30" should do what I need. We actually have our Sprinter Wrapped... I did the design for the wrap after they gave me the template with and initial layout... then they came out to our warehouse to wrap it, and those wrappers had a skill set I would never attempt. But I see your point that if you have a 54 you can do whatever you want or just use 30" paper and keep it small.
Go with a 54. It's near the same foot print... And imo, what you really want is a latex. Their cheap $9/10,000 model is a 54. Pretty sure they have a printer and cutter combo for like 11k. If you end up not liking it... You could easily turn around and sell both and make most of your money back. The heads are cheap, and there's not too much that goes wrong with them - if you leave a solvent unplugged for a few days you could need a 20,000 repair on heads,(ours had a malfunction, we print daily... No head strikes, but an issue caused us to need 8 new print heads... Our supplier was generous enough to give us a bulk discount of $5,000 per head...so you can see why I'm more biased towards latex) so people tend not to buy used machines for much, especially from a shop that doesn't use it every single day. Latex doesn't have that issue, so people aren't as reluctant.
You'll also find more materials available in 54" as it's the standard. You can find most in 30... But at least around here, they aren't kept in stock as much.
If you do shirts you need a heat press. You could technically use an iron if it's stuff that will be worn once... But I don't suggest it. So there's another few hundred, and another couple ft of space taken up. So... Your looking at 6-7 ft of space for the printer... 3-5 for the heat press, 6-7 for the cutter... If you want your stickers to last a few more years that's another 6-7 ft for a laminator... A 4x8 table is a must...
I bought a printer for my home office. By the time I was done buying all the toys I wanted (just printer, cutter and laminator) my garage, and 700 sqft of basement became in usable.
The printers and cutters are about 4-500 lbs too... They're on wheels, so you can move them around... But if you want to go room to room, or downstairs, or get rid of them... Good luck.
It's going to be a very expensive toy. One with a ROI of a few years, if not more. Take into account all the real estate your giving g up in your home... I think you really need to ask yourself if it's worth it or not. If you are really just trying to save a few thousand bucks, I think you'll be disappointed. If your actually interested in learning, willing to spend hundreds of hours (literally, not making that up), learning, have the space to give up without having the wife yell at you.. then go ahead.
printing is fun, cutting is fun. But it's not cheap. We have clients who manufacture industrial machinery. They spend $20,000 every 3 months on decals. So they're doing 80,000 a year just on easy decals... 8-14x what you're doing, and I'm sure they've never considered bringing printing in house.
What I foresee happening is you're going to buy a printer... Buy a few rolls of media, spend hours getting your printer to match your companies colors... Put 5000 decals on batteries.... And then watch all the decals slowly peel off due to heat/wear and tear, and it'll make your batteries look cheap. Youll likely lose more cash in lost sales, then you'll ever be able to save.
I can take some 18650 batteries, solder them together, throw some plastic on them and make a laptop battery (and maybe whatever batteries you guys make?), But I don't. I know each cell is worth a few bucks, and the crooks at Dell want me to pay $150 for something that costs them $15 to make... But I also know I can't do it better than they can. Sure I can save some money, but the quality of the product would go down... And I'm not about to risk my $2000 laptop to save a few hundred dollars.
I'm sure you put a lot of blood and sweat into starting your business. Is the potential savings worth the risk of your brand image?
